FACING THE ENEMY

The story of a friendship torn apart when Nazi ideology arrives on America’s shores.

It’s 1937, and two young best friends—Benjamin Puterman, who is Jewish, and Thomas Anspach, who is German American and presumably Christian—are anticipating the joys of summer. But Tommy’s harsh father has other plans: He enrolls his 13-year-old son in Camp Nordland in rural New Jersey. The camp’s purpose is to immerse German American youths in their heritage, including the propaganda of Hitler’s Nazi Party, and Tommy quickly learns that he can’t be friends with Benjy anymore. But the people of New Jersey aren’t staying silent about Nordland, and when Benjy’s father joins the Newark Minutemen, a group of “anti-Nazi vigilantes,” Benjy, also 13, pleads with his elders to let him help. His plea leads to the founding of the Minutekids. As the years pass and Hitler marches across Europe, Benjy and Tommy, who are in school together, circle each other. When the 1940s roll around, the ground shifts. Is reconciliation possible? Each boy struggles with different types of personal adversity, and the challenges of their relationship highlight an important, lesser-known chapter in U.S. history. Unfortunately, many of the poems feel flat, and the two teens’ voices sound very alike and not much like those of real adolescents.

Critical historical information conveyed through poems that don’t do justice to the subject’s emotional weight.